The Spencer
523 West 121st Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway · Morningside Heights, Upper West Side
BBL 1019760013 · BIN 1059652
- Year built
- 1905
- Type
- Cooperative
- Landmark
- No
- Amenities
- Doorman; elevator; live-in superintendent; central laundry; storage; bicycle room
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at The Spencer would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.
The Spencer is a small doorman cooperative with 24 residences on West 121st Street. George F. Pelham's design uses red Roman brick, classical entrance detailing and a pronounced cornice. Inside, apartments can retain side-by-side living and dining rooms, wood paneling and generous ceiling heights.
The combination of a six-story building and staffed entrance is consequential at this scale. The cooperative's services are supported by a relatively small group of shareholders, while its room arrangements reflect the larger formal spaces of early-twentieth-century apartment design.
Architecture and unit composition
Architectural history identifies the building as part of a coordinated group of apartment houses completed in 1905. The Spencer's façade includes band courses, quoining, window lintels with scrolled keystones and a bracketed entrance hood supported by classical pilasters.
The apartment inventory includes two-bedroom, five-room plans with adjoining formal living and dining rooms. Windowed eat-in kitchens and windowed bathrooms appear in several layouts. Preserved oak paneling, moldings and original cabinetry are present in some homes, with other interiors more extensively renovated.
Recorded apartment areas commonly range from approximately 850 to 1,200 square feet. That creates a meaningful spread even within the two-bedroom category. A separate dining room can supply an additional enclosed room without changing the apartment's exterior footprint, while a large eat-in kitchen preserves dining space if the formal room is used differently.
Front and rear exposures also vary. Some homes extend between north- and south-facing windows, while rear apartments have their principal rooms away from West 121st Street. Raised first-floor apartments provide a different entrance relationship from homes reached by elevator on upper floors.
Building operations
Doorman service, a live-in superintendent and an elevator distinguish the operating structure. Laundry, bicycle storage and additional storage are provided within the building. These services accompany a modest residence count, making the staffing component more prominent than it would be in a much larger cooperative.
The cooperative has used institutional financing: its lender announced a line of credit for Spencer Apartments, Inc. in 2018. That historical facility establishes the corporation's separate borrowing activity; it is not a statement of the current mortgage balance or an individual buyer's financing limit.
Policy framework
Pets: Allowed — confirm with the managing agent.
Financing: Up to 80%, with a minimum 20% down payment — confirm with the managing agent.
Recent sales
Recent transfers at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 31, 2025 | 43 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,201 sf | $953,500 | $794/sf | -1.5% |
| Dec 6, 2022 | 1 | 2 BR · 1 BA | $599,000 | -22.1% | |
| Feb 2, 2017 | 52 | 2 BR · 1 BA · 1,000 sf | $830,000 | $830/sf | -6.7% |
| Feb 23, 2015 | 62 | 2 BR · 1 BA · 1,000 sf | $877,500 | $878/sf | -4.1% |
| Jun 20, 2013 | 2 | 2 BR | $620,000 | +0.0% | |
| Aug 23, 2011 | 23 | 3 BR · 2 BA · 1,200 sf | $855,000 | $713/sf | -2.3% |
| Jul 28, 2011 | 33 | 2 BR | $899,000 | +0.0% | |
| Jun 27, 2011 | 32 | 2 BR | $544,000 | -5.4% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $794/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 3.1% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Other recent transfers
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 9, 2009 | 44 | $849,000 |
| Mar 23, 2005 | 3 | $685,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-01976-0013) and verified listing data. Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified by The Roebling Team research desk. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price; square footage on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.
Buying here? Co-op closing costs typically run 2 to 3% of the price. See NYC co-op and condo closing costs, line by line.
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Comparable buildings
- 114 Morningside Drive: A nearby prewar cooperative of similar scale with a park-edge setting.
- 50 Morningside Drive: Another six-story cooperative with a comparable residence count.
- The Luxor: A taller prewar cooperative with a larger inventory farther south.
- The Charlemagne: A larger early-twentieth-century cooperative within Morningside Heights.
- 603 West 111th Street: A smaller cooperative for comparing association size and apartment configuration.
- The Strathmore: A taller Riverside Drive cooperative with a substantially different frontage and scale.
More Upper West Side buildings
- The Blennerhasset, 507–511 West 111th Street — 1903 co-op
- Cathedral Tower, 514 West 110th Street — 1911 condominium by Schwartz & Gross
- 520 West 110th Street — 1911 condominium by Schwartz & Gross
- The Britannia, 527 West 110th Street — 1909 condominium
- 530 Amsterdam Avenue — 1931 co-op by Margon & Holder
- 532 West 111th Street (The Charlemagne) — 1909 co-op by Milliken & Moeller
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, transit, and pricing across Upper West Side — read The Roebling Team Guide to Upper West Side.
The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
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